I haven’t been manic in months …

so I suppose I am due. It has been a peacefully wonderful time in which my mind has been moving at a pace that is within the realm that is called, by the rational world, normal. Unprecedented would be the word that comes to mind to describe the amount of time that has passed since the last episode. I knew, however, that it couldn’t last forever. It never does. And curiously, I am glad to have my old friend back, at least for a time.

That doesn’t mean that in a few days I won’t be wishing for silence and a functionality that I can live with, but I have (and I can’t believe I am saying this) missed the wild and random thoughts that roll though my brain like an out-of-control revolving door. Since I started art class, however, I have been in a state of normalcy. It is foreign to me, this normal thought process, and it took a couple of weeks to realize that I could control what entered into my brain pan. I am certain, as I have been certain of little else, that my friends haven’t missed the random, rambling, incoherent and often off the wall messages that they usually receive when I am on overdrive.

I was, I must say, somewhat surprised that a complete meltdown did not occur last weekend after taking my nieces to Chuck E. Cheese. There are few things that have everything conducive to a manic attack as the flashing lights, loud, repetitive sounds and cacophony of smells and voices to induce a full blown manic attack. I was rather perplexed that it did not trigger an episode; perplexed, and yet grateful as there was much to do during the limited hours of that particular weekend.

In my experience, which unfortunately, is vast, sudden, unexpected change seems to be the biggest catalyst. While I have gone through many changes in the past few months, I say again that an art class that I began in February has had an amazing impact on the ability to focus and thwart manic swings. My art teacher, an enigma unto himself and a genius in his own right, has had more of an impact than he could ever know, on my officiousness to harness my thoughts into interpretive ideas. Art has, without doubt, changed the way my mind works.

But as anything else in life, it has it’s limits and eventually, the substance that makes me who I am will become evident. I have spent many months thriving on the racing thoughts and have learned to cope with what most people would find overwhelming and unbearable. The things that seem intrusive to others, I thrive on.

There is nothing wrong with being different from everyone else. As time passes, I realize that being the “odd person out” is more of an attribute than a handicap. Imagine, for a moment, a world where everyone was exactly the same. It would be a slow and arduous form of torture. I can’t even fathom a world with people just like me. I am certain that, were that true, we would brain ourselves with a hammer within a week’s time.

I knew yesterday, when I caved and began listen to Billy Joel’s “Always A Woman” that times, according to Bob, they were a changin’. I had refrained for a long time from the over and over and over, et al, replaying of that particular song and the moment that I made a conscious decision to play it was like admitting that I was warped. It has been on repeat now for the past 36 hours. It isn’t that it is my favorite song of all time, but that seems to have little relevance.

I suppose, more than anything else, I am talking to the millions of others who face themselves on a regular basis and run, screaming, in the other direction. We are who we are. We live as we live. We think as we think. We cope as we cope. There is nothing, inherently, wrong with us. We are who we are and if the world cannot handle us as we are, then the insecurity lies within the world, not within ourselves. I am me. The music I dance to is mine. Regrets are useless as nothing that has passed can be changed. I am comfortable in my own skin, even when my skin seems odd.

Love me or hate me, I am who I am and irregardless of others’ opinions of me, will continue to march to the drum that my God plays for me. I am not ashamed of who I was for without my past, my future would be irrelevant.

Romans 12:2 ~ And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.